Chapter 116: 1994

By the time I finished my little speech, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. It was hard for me to tell for sure, though, since I was crying and could barely read the paper I had written it down on. I was working from memory at that point. Over in the front row, Bucky was crying, and Tusker and Tessa had their arms around each other and were weeping.

We all pulled ourselves together, though, and I sent Marilyn and the kids out to the car. I had to help carry the casket out to the hearse with the rest of the pallbearers. Once we were done, I was in the car behind the limo carrying the Tusks, with the other pallbearers following. At the cemetery, we laid Carter to rest, and then went back to the church for a memorial lunch in the parish hall.

At the lunch Tessa wrapped me in a big hug and thanked me. Tusker told me, “You should have said something, man.”

I shook my head. “What? Carter asked me not to, and there wasn’t anything else you could have done other than what you were already doing. I didn’t tell Marilyn, either. Sometimes there just are no good answers.”

He sighed and shook my hand. “I know. I just wish it could have been different.”

“Did you and Tessa ever think about having any more children?”

He shrugged at that. “We thought about it a few years ago but decided two were enough. It’s too late now in any case.”

“Really? Tessa’s my age, right? She’s what, thirty-eight or thirty-nine?”

At that Tusker gave me the first smile I had seen in weeks. “It’s not her, it’s me! I got snipped a few years ago.” He made a scissors motion with his fingers.

My eyes widened at that. “I had no idea! When did you do that?”

“Oh, I guess around five or six years ago. Tessa wanted to get off the Pill and we decided we didn’t want any more kids. Now that I think about it, you and Marilyn must have been away on vacation or something.”

Back on my first go, I had gotten a vasectomy, too. In an incredibly selfish way, our accident, with Marilyn losing the baby and being unable to have any more children, had spared me having to go through it again. It is nowhere near as enjoyable as they advertise!

First, you aren’t unconscious; they do this all under a local. You are laying there with your legs up in stirrups, and the doctor says, ‘You’ll just feel a pinch, like a bee sting.’ Well, it wasn’t a pinch, and I’ve never had a bee sting me there! Next, while you are looking down between your legs, he’s slicing and dicing you, and then while the vas deferens is exposed, he is cauterizing that. Wait until you see smoke rising from a place that smoke is never supposed to rise from!

Afterwards he slaps a Band-Aid on everything, and you get to wear a modified jockstrap to support everything and go home with. He also gives you some painkillers, and they aren’t enough, and they are nowhere near as strong as they need to be. You are going to be off your feet for about a week and you are going to be in pain for three to four weeks.

Ahead of time you are told, ‘It’s no worse than getting kicked in the balls.’ That is perfectly true. Left unsaid is the fact that no man yet born has ever volunteered to get kicked in the balls! Then, the next morning, when you start moving again, it feels like somebody kicked you in the balls all over again! It’s like this day after day for almost a month! Forget about sex! Nothing down there is going to work for weeks!

Also, by the way, don’t let your dog sit in your lap. The doctor told me this and I asked, ‘Why not?’ He told me how one of his patients when home, sat down in the recliner, and his St. Bernard jumped into his lap. The stitches gave way and everything kind of squirted out through the opening. He ended up in an ambulance going to the hospital!

I grinned back at my friend. “I’ll bet that made riding a motorcycle an exciting experience!”

Tusker rolled his eyes. “Like you wouldn’t believe! Come over to the house sometime. I’ll kick you in the nuts and then we can go dirt biking on a motocross trail!”

“You make it sound so appealing! I can see why you do so well in sales.”

Tusker laughed, again probably for the first time in a month or more, and then went off with Tessa to talk to some of their guests.

The good news was that after Carter was laid to rest the Tusk family settled back down again. Without the stress of his failing treatment, our friends went back to normal. It had seemed at one point like they were on the verge of splitting, but it all just calmed down and they stayed together. A few weeks later, he showed me a small pamphlet from a memorial company and pointed out the stone they were getting for the grave. It was going to be a large stone, but one with spaces for three names, Carter’s and both his parents. They had bought the plots on either side of his.

Later that fall, we were having dinner with the Tusks, and I asked, “Back when Carter first got sick, and you guys started taking him down to Johns Hopkins, do you remember how I did some checking if there were any treatments available that he could get?”

Tusker and Tessa looked at each other and then Tessa said, “Yes, and you said there wasn’t anything that could be done that we weren’t already doing.”

“That’s true. What I didn’t say, because it had nothing to do with Carter, was that the doctors I spoke to all said that the one thing I could do was help get them the funding for more research. I was thinking, I mean, yes, in Congress I can do that, but what about just as a private citizen? I talked to a guy down at Johns Hopkins. If you would agree to it, I want to create a professorship for research down there. We’ll call it the Carter Henry Tusk Chair, or something like that.”

They looked at each other again, and it was Tusker that answered. “Uh, yeah, I guess so. How much would that cost?”

“Well, nothing. I would simply endow a chair and send them a check.”

“Okay, but how much is it?”

I had been hoping to avoid that, but it was a legitimate question. “Four million.” I had discussed this with my wife of course, especially considering she was the trustee for the Buckman Foundation and would be writing the check.

Tessa’s and Tusker’s eyes snapped wide open! “Four million? Dollars? You can’t ... I mean ... Are you kidding me?” gabbled my friend.

“Tusker, I can’t take it with me. Maybe someday something that professor figures out can save me, right? Besides, money isn’t something I covet just to be rich. It’s a tool, and what better way to use it than something like this,” I responded.

“Holy fucking shit!” he exclaimed, which set all the kids to giggling.

Marilyn looked at our offspring and scolded them. “Just because Uncle Tusker said a bad word doesn’t mean you get to.”

“Do we get to wash his mouth out with soap?” asked Charlie. Bucky was grinning and nodding.

“You bet, as soon as you figure out a way to wrestle him to the ground,” replied Marilyn.

Charlie eyed Tusker, who gave him a menacing look in return. “Maybe later.”

“If you’re getting a professor, why do they call him a chair, Uncle Carl?” asked Bucky.

I had to blink at that. “I’m not really sure, Bucky. I think they used to give you a really fancy chair to sit on at some old-time colleges, but I never asked that before.”

“Oh.”

Thus, was born the Carter Henry Tusk Chair for Pediatric Oncology at Johns Hopkins. There was a fair bit of paperwork involved, and then the university had to hire somebody to fill the chair. That we couldn’t decide, on the theory that none of us knew anything about pediatric oncology. That was true. The professorship would become effective in the fall semester of 1994, and we and the Tusks were invited to attend the grand opening, or whatever they called it. That would be for the future, though, a year away.

In the meantime, I needed to get back to my job as one of the leaders of the free world. I won’t say that this had been a distraction from that. It was more like being a Congressman had been a distraction from being a friend. Still, I needed to get back to Washington and start fighting for my Defending the Second Amendment Bill, which was planned to be the formal name.

I had some specific thoughts in mind for the bill, which we were abbreviating as D2A. I had a few very specific things I wanted in the bill, and my biggest foes were not going to be the Democrats, but my fellow Republicans! The Democrats wouldn’t allow anything I wanted, plain and simple, but after 1994 they would be in the minority. They could vote against it, but the odds were that we would have enough of a majority to ram through even vetoed legislation. Putting any kind of sensible restrictions on guns, however, was the sort of thing that the NRA would never allow. What I had in mind was:

* Require all states to be ‘shall issue’ states rather than ‘may issue’ states for concealed carry permits.

* Require all states to recognize each other’s permits.

* End the assault weapons ban (which wasn’t law yet but would be next year. It would be one of the last gasps of the Democratic Congress.)

* Limit all civilian weapons magazines to a maximum of 10 rounds, no matter what the actual weapon could fire.

Some of the items would be near and dear to the Republicans and would pass without any question. For years there had been discussion of changing the rules on concealed carry. After my experiences with Hamilton’s stalking of Marilyn and Charlie, I was all in favor of this. I also knew that some of the more liberal states, like Maryland and Massachusetts would be a very tough sell. Still, I figured we could count on Congressional votes from the more rural and conservative districts of those states.

Likewise, ending the upcoming assault weapons ban would be popular with the Republicans. It was one of our stupider laws, basing decisions on whether a gun was an ‘assault weapon’ on purely cosmetic items. Military people know full well what an assault rifle is. It is a fully automatic rifle firing an intermediate (smaller size than a rifle) cartridge with a detachable magazine. What Congress had tried to do was ban guns based on what they looked like. If it looked like an AK-47, even if it was semi-automatic, it was an assault weapon. An M-1 Garand, which looked like a regular rifle, was also semi-automatic and was far more powerful and accurate, wasn’t considered an assault weapon. They made up all sorts of silly rules and exceptions based on whether the stock folded up, or it had a flash suppressor, or a pistol grip, or even a grenade launcher! Never mind that grenade launchers and fully automatic weapons were already illegal, and the mere possession of them would land you in the slammer. No, they now constituted a convoluted assault weapon category.

Most of that stuff was just flash and plastic parts. For another thing, almost no crimes are committed with long guns. They are hard to conceal and quite impractical. What criminals use are handguns. What made these weapons dangerous wasn’t what they looked like; it was that they were designed to use military sized magazines of ammunition. Some of the magazines were really amazing. You had extended thirty round magazines for some pistols that stuck out the bottom of the regular handgrip, and some assault weapon types could accommodate a hundred rounds or more in military issue circular magazines.

What we needed was something vastly simpler. Eliminate the rules on what was or wasn’t an assault weapon. Simply state that civilians couldn’t own automatic weapons and couldn’t use magazines with more than a ten-round capacity.

The NRA would love to end the assault weapons ban. As far as they were concerned any restriction on gun ownership was pure anathema. Any time a state overrode Federal law on guns, they were there to fight it the next day. They would also fight against a restriction on magazine capacity, but I figured I could swing that one through. Most of the public couldn’t understand why anyone needed an M-16 style ‘hunting rifle’ (the AR-15) with a thirty-round magazine.

I also knew they would protest that it couldn’t be done. They would line up a bunch of gun and ammunition manufacturers who would swear on a stack of Bibles they couldn’t make magazines in those capacities, that it would be too expensive and drive them all into bankruptcy. That was the sheerest bullshit. All that needed to be done was to take an existing magazine and position a plug at the bottom to take up space, and then replace the spring with a smaller one. We could even add a provision to the bill preventing conversion of a ten round civilian magazine to a full-sized military magazine, much like there were laws against converting semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic versions.

What I didn’t see happening was a repeal of the Brady Bill, the Federal law requiring background checks on all handgun purchases. My own feelings on this were mixed. No, it’s not a good idea to let crazy people and criminals buy guns, but it wouldn’t stop them from getting their hands on them. The bill itself was chockfull of loopholes anyway. More importantly, as a tactical decision, the Democrats were going to squawk loudly about D2A, and would trot out Jim Brady shamelessly. D2A would be easier if we didn’t mess with the Brady Bill. The NRA was going to have to lump it on this one.

By now we had the outline of the ten bills we were going to make the centerpiece of the Contract with America. The entire concept was still under a tight hold, and the media hadn’t twigged to our plans yet. Newt was planning to roll it out after the primary season was finished, in the spring. In the meantime, most of the Gang of Eight were making regular trips over to the Heritage Foundation, and several nights a week we had meetings at the Clubhouse (my den, in the house on 30^th) with lawyers from the Heritage Foundation. We had the following bills in the works, although with some of them the names kept changing, as we tried to find better sounding alternatives:

1. Bill 1 - Balanced Budget Act, John Boehner to be in charge. This was a big one, mandating a move towards a balanced budget and a line-item veto for the President. I expected this one to be pawed over by every interest group under the sun!

2. Bill 2 - D2A, yours truly presiding, see above.

3. Bill 3 - Personal Responsibility Act, Scott Klug’s baby. This was welfare reform in all its myriad forms, including prohibitions against giving welfare to underage mothers, ending extra welfare benefits based on family size, ending open-ended welfare benefits, and requiring people to get a job. There were going to be a lot of little provisions, and the Democrats would hate every one of them!

4. Bill 4 - Tort Reform Act, Jim Nussle. Personally, I figured this one was the least likely to get passed. Trial lawyers were big fans of the Democrats, since by creating all sorts of new ‘rights’, the Democrats gave fertile ground for lawsuits when somebody violated somebody’s rights.

5. Bill 5 - Rebuilding America Act, me again. I had a fair bit of knowledge from when I had written Eat Your Peas! and I used my contacts shamelessly. I contacted Harry Johnson and used his ideas repeatedly. If he couldn’t figure out something, he knew somebody who could. More on that later.

6. Bill 6 - Unfunded Mandate Elimination Act, Chuck Taylor’s responsibility. This was straightforward in concept. An unfunded mandate was routine these days and was created whenever some government agency ordered something done without paying for it. For instance, if the Department of Education requires all schools to hire a counselor for some reason (who knows why, who cares, they did it all the time!) but leaves paying for that counselor up to the local school district, which now has to raise taxes to pay for this person; that was an unfunded mandate. Chuck’s bill was supposed to require that this sort of thing be prevented.

7. Bill 7 - Regulation Reform Act, Rick Santorum. A whole shitload of items related to cost-benefit studies and restrictions on various government entities to write new regulations willy-nilly. I hoped Rick could pull this off. While we were all going to be running for re-election, for Rick it was an even bigger deal - he was planning to run for the Senate in Pennsylvania.

8. Bill 8 - Social Security Reform Act, Frank Riggs. Another unlikely item, but worthy, nevertheless. For instance, I knew that he was raising the age Social Security could be collected at. When it was passed in 1935, you couldn’t collect until you were sixty-five, but at the time, the average life expectancy was only about sixty-one. Currently, you could start collecting limited benefits as young as sixty-two, but the average life expectancy was over seventy-five. The numbers made absolutely no sense. Simply indexing benefits to age would save us a fortune!

9. Bill 9 - Business Tax Reform Act, John Doolittle. I figured this one was going to be as big a boondoggle as the balanced budget act would be. Still, I would love to see the end of double taxation on dividends, and while the Buckman Group had never really done much investing overseas, I knew taxes were managed quite differently elsewhere, and not to America’s benefit.

10. Bill 10 - Congressional Reform Act, Newt Gingrich to preside over. This was really a long shot. It had a bunch of little things, like cutting the number of committees, numbers of staff, adding term limits, and all sorts of odds and ends that my fellow Congressmen would fight tooth and nail. They’d vote to let the Republic end before they would let a single staffer go!